See How WC2 Concept Cockpits Stack Up (March 20, 2021)

[Bandit LOAF]

I went back and compared those Wing Commander 2 WIP cockpits we recovered with the final assets. Check out these Broadsword turrets which lose, among other things, the hand graphics!

A set of three hard drives belonging to an unidentified Origin Systems employee was recovered by Joe Garrity of the Origin Museum and Dan Chisarick. The contents included installations of Wing Commander I and II and a copy of DeluxePaint with several Wing Commander II-related animation files saved.

While the images were originally stored as ANM animation files they are actually collections of static images, likely grouped together as animations for ease of organization and/or presentation. Inividual unique frames have been saved as PCX files and exported as PNGs for the galleries seen below.

Some are pretty similar, like the Epee...





... while others like the Ferret are very different!





You can find them all here!

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Original update published on March 20, 2021

 

[Wedge009]

Very nice. I wonder why they chose not to keep the hand animations. I doubt there would be any conflict with movement of the turret vs the movement of the ship.

The green colouring makes sense to me, given the final colours of all the Concordia fighters - I don't think anyone besides InSystem Security flew the Ferrets.

 

[AD]

I wonder why they chose not to keep the hand animations. I doubt there would be any conflict with movement of the turret vs the movement of the ship.

I can't say with any certainty that it's the reason, but mirroring the hand for a double gripped control probably meant doubling the hand assets. I don't know it that would warrant completely removing both, but it's possible if they were that hard up for disk space.